


I Don't

by oonaseckar



Category: Elementary (TV), Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes (Downey films), Sherlock Holmes (Rathbone films), Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: F/M, Gen, Jilted, Left at the Altar, M/M, Weddings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:20:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 1,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26518906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oonaseckar/pseuds/oonaseckar
Summary: John is marrying Greg.  It's the happiest day of his life.Until he's left at the altar.  Greg has run off - with Jim Moriarty.Who was supposed to be marrying a chap called Sherlock Holmes, today.That's all quite bad enough.  Until Greg and Moriarty appear on a chatshow, to discuss how they both jilted their fiancés at the altar.  And how blissfully happy they are, with each other.It's enough to drive a man to seek out, and get 'engaged' to, his rival's ex.  John is sure Sherlock Holmes would like a nice cold dish of revenge, too...
Relationships: Greg Lestrade/Jim Moriarty, Greg Lestrade/John Watson, Sherlock Holmes/Jim Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 2
Kudos: 33





	1. Chapter 1

It's John's wedding day, and he's never been happier. He's standing in front of the Unitarian minister, his family on one side of the small nineteenth century nonconformist church, and Greg's family on the other. His sister Harry is best man, worrying almost audibly at his side about rings and her monkey suit and the honeymoon flights she's booked them: but John isn't worrying about anything. He's _blissful_. He's hooked his man, he can marry him –- now –- and they have the entire rest of their lives to live out together, happily. Couldn't be better. Nothing to worry about.

Except... where's Greg? It's not that he's _late_ –- no, perish that thought. But it's just that, as long as he arrives right now, he'll be _exactly on time._ Not a second early, not a second late.

Which, one second later, makes him... one second late.

And ten minutes later, he's _ten minutes_ late.

Five minutes after that, and Molly, Greg's cousin and one of their bridesmaids –- she was supposed to be one of their bridesmaids –- has her mother's phone jammed against her ear, and is furiously calling Greg again, and again, and again. Red-faced and cursing him and kicking the pew by the aisle, as he doesn't answer, and doesn't answer, and _doesn't answer._ The minister is troubled, and trying to offer reassurance and comfort to John, who is too upset and distraught and –- off and on –- absolutely spitting angry –- to really attend to it. And Greg's father and mother, Petey and Jayne, are frantically calling around every hospital and police station in the area, assuring each other that Greg will be fine, he'll be _fine_ , but they should just check!

That awful possibility –- that maybe Greg is hurt, or lost (or arrested –- last night was his bachelor party, after all –- both of their bachelor parties) is what keeps John only _intermittently_ angry as a spitting, clawing cat.


	2. Chapter 2

Another ten minutes –- a whole ten, and there are other couples due to be married in this church today, and there's a time limit on how long they can wait. And then, Greg's best man, Tommy Gregson, at least turns up at the church door. And first of all answers the questions about why he hasn't been answering his phone, as well as Greg being incommunicado. “I didn't want to get your hopes up, until I'd tracked him down myself,” he explains. He's in his morning suit, but with a weary, unshaven, sleep-deprived face, as he sits down in the pews next to Petey and Jayne. Nominally he's explaining to them. But his face turns to John, who has paced about the aisle, about the nave, at the front of the church, in front of the aisles –- but now, ridiculously, he's back standing at the altar. He might as well have a wilted bouquet in his hands, and a low-neck satin dress with puff sleeves. Maybe bouffant hair into the bargain. He's the very picture of a jilted bride.

Tommy says, “I couldn't find him. He got up, got dressed right, looked great, we were all set. I went to get shaved, but then I heard a bang. When I checked, the bedroom window was open... He'd given me the slip. He wasn't anywhere. I thought he was kidding around, took off after him, phoned but no answer...”

What a drama queen, John thinks distantly. Sure, the bedroom window in the apartment that Greg has shared with Tommy the past two years, it opens on a fire escape. But even so. There's nothing wrong with just _using the goddamn door._ Unless you're looking to make a statement, maybe.

“I've been jilted,” he says, almost as surprised as anyone else to hear the words come out of his mouth. Everyone turns to look at him –- well, most everyone was looking at him already, to tell the truth. Furtively, covertly, every so often someone else coming to hold his hands and hug him and tell him _everything will be fine,_ something's happened but it _won't be anything serious_ and it'll _all be sorted out before you know it._


	3. Chapter 3

It's Molly's turn this time. She comes over and, yes, hugs him, almost crying herself, kisses his cheek. Her bridesmaid's dress bunches up against the legs of his morning suit trousers, and it makes him sadder than anything. All this finery and expense and trouble, for _nothing_. Their lovely gay wedding, never to be. “You don't know that, John, love,” she says stubbornly. “There might still be a reason. Maybe he...” And she trails off, apparently having trouble coming up with something.

“Saw a wounded chihuahua across the street, through the window, that needed rescuing?” John asks, sarcastically. Oh, dear, now he's being _sarcastic_. “Remembered he'd left the gas on, somewhere five hundred miles away?”

And Tommy coughs. “Er, no,” he says. No-one has ever sounded quite so apologetic. Or, indeed, apprehensive. “Actually it wasn't either of those things.” Now it's Tommy who has everyone's attention, rather than John. Or at least everyone who's near enough to have heard. In the rest of the church there's getting to be a restless rustling and shifting about, a low murmur of conversation that John is willing to bet involves a lot of suggestions that _really we've waited long enough_ and _that boy is never coming_ and _damn it I never liked his eyes, Shinwell._ And even more _poor John,_ but he might cry (again) if he lets himself think about that.

Better to think about something else. So instead, he asks Tommy, “So what thing was it? What the hell is _so damn important_ that Greg decided to skip his own damn wedding, Tommy?” He's aware that his voice isn't steady, isn't calm, is actually verging quite close upon hysterical. He doesn't really care, either.

“Ah,” Tommy says, or stalls. Then gives in, gives it up. “He's run off with someone else," he says, baldly factual. "Someone else who was also supposed to get married today, it turns out. So you're not the only one, at least. Someone else has been left at the altar, too.”

Maybe it's supposed to be a comfort, but if so, it's a really really crap one. John finally gives in, abandons pride and dignity, and sits down –- just sits down on the ledge, designed for communion and God knows what –- and cries. Surrounded by bridesmaids, patting at him with handkerchiefs, he cries.


	4. Chapter 4

Turns out, Greg did at least leave a _Dear John_ for his rejected groom. Tommy just missed it, in his rush to climb down fire escapes and give chase to errant bridegrooms. Also, although left on Greg's own pillow, it was knocked astray onto the floor and took a few hours to come to light. It doesn't matter. Before that ever happened, Greg finally picked up the phone to Tommy's increasingly desperate calls –- even where he'd ignored his cousin's, mother's, father's, and those of anyone else who had his number, and had attended that train-wreck of a ceremony.

' _Dear John,_

_Before anything else, I'm so sorry. I do love you, I do. I know it doesn't seem that way. I met Jim just a few weeks before the ceremony, and he was getting married too, on the same day! We had that in common: that was how we got talking. Then we kept talking, and we bumped into each other a few more times, and we kept on talking, then we were in love. It was that easy, that quick. But the ceremonies were coming up and we both felt so guilty, we agreed we couldn't do anything. We were both going to do the right thing._

_It's not so easy, though. On my bachelor night, I couldn't help calling him, and we talked for hours. I pretended I was paying for stripper lapdances just for an excuse to stand outside in the street and talk to a guy fifty miles away, on his own bachelor party. And this morning, he'd texted me five times in the night. Saying we were doing the right thing, maybe it was the right thing, he wasn't sure, he missed me. Then asking me to reconsider._


	5. Chapter 5

_Babe, I tried. To do the right thing, to be a better man. I'm really sorry, but it's better this way. You deserve someone who appreciates all the wonderful ways that you are, and you **are**. Someone who gets you, who really loves you._

_xxlove_

_Greg._

And John doesn't break anything, when he finishes reading what Greg had to say about his betrayal, and defection and humiliation of one who's loved him faithfully. And cooked his godawful stinky tuna-based weight-lifter diet, and gone to see his stupid ageing lousy folk-band play too, for nigh on two years. 

But only because the Book of Common Prayer _bounces_ , when he hefts it up and gives it all the muscle he's built up with spotting for Greg's lifts, aimed right at the opposite wall of the church.

John does get through. He does survive that first night alone, humiliated, after being stranded at the altar and ditched publicly. Perhaps only because he isn't actually alone: Molly –- who has officially switched family loyalties –- and the rest of the bridesmaids, and his mum and dad, and both best men stick around, well into the night, to keep him company. And so does the vintage bottle of champagne, that was supposed to greet them in their hotel suite, the first night of their married life. He practically finishes the bottle himself, and uses the dregs –- in a cheap supermarket plastic 'glass' –- to toast the bastard with. Most of his toast is unrepeatable –- while being gently patted on the back by his mother (oops) and with the bridesmaids lounging around on the floor at his feet crying 'hear hear!' But he finishes off with, “--and absolute bollocks to the waddling pig-faced twunt, because I'll be over this inside three months, I'm moving on to better things, and in fact, _see if I care!_ ”

The cheer it gets is a bit half-hearted, though. Promptly bursting into tears probably doesn't help.


	6. Chapter 6

What _really_ doesn't help is when the story gets out in the media. And _media_ , John finds, doesn't just mean social media, amateur and kept to relatively closed circles, however distressing and triggering to the emotions. Nope, apparently the story is interesting enough –- and, God, it must be a quiet news season, surely –- to merit small articles in some newspaper back pages. And one actual two-page feature, photoshoot and all, in a liberal-leaning Sunday supplement. Which concentrates rather more on the multiplicity of gay engagements and marriages involved, and how lovely and _woke_ the interviewer is, rather than the shitty nasty behaviour of the interviewees.


End file.
